The Vietnam War—still alive in YA fiction. Part I. Everybody Sees the Ants

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The Vietnam Conflict ended nearly forty years ago, yet it still touches our lives. Two recent young adult (YA) books are prime examples. One, with a contemporary setting (Everybody Sees the Ants) depicts how lives are still affected by what happened. The setting for the other is historical (I Pledge Allegiance) and provides an example of the war as a resource for current literature. Neither book is a guts-and-glory war story—in both the war serves more as a backdrop in the lives of the characters. Although the two books are very different, they do have one element in common—a recurring dream by the hero. I’ll describe the two books separately in a two-part post. Continue reading